Bungie is straight-up not having a good time as of late.Again. This time, though, we’re looking at one of the biggest crises the company’s ever had, as it continues to lay off some of its most valuable talent, even afterDestiny 2: The Final Shapeended up beingway better than expected.
More specifically, Bungie recently announced that it’slosing about a third of its staff. Some of these folks are being rolled over into Sony, whileothers outright lost their jobs, but the really surprising bit is how many veteran developers have been booted from the studio. According to thelatest developmentsin a Gamespot report, senior executives Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy have also been affected by these layoffs, which comes as a pretty big surprise.
Bungie has lost too much valuable talent at this point
Smith and Noseworthy have been with Bungie andDestiny, specifically, for a very long time now. Smith was, in fact, one of the peopleresponsiblefor thewidely unpopular round of sunsettingbrought about with the release of theBeyond LightDLC. Regardless, he was a known quantity in theDestinycommunity, and spearheaded much of the franchise’s development in the years prior alongside Noseworthy. In October 2023,Bungie also booted the legendary Michael Salvatori from the development team, who was responsible for almost all ofDestiny2‘s iconic soundtrack.
These are just three veteran developers of the literally hundreds of talented staff that Bungie has lost over the past couple of months. It’s hard to say whether this might lead to a breaking point of some sort this early on, but it’s certainly not unthinkable to imagine that even Bungie’s current flagship projects (i.e.Destiny 2andMarathon) might suffer such an immense brain drain.New content is still pouring intoDestiny 2, of course, but who knows what the future might hold for it.
Now, it’s very important to note that Smith and Noseworthy had been spearheading the mysteriousPaybackproject in the background. Following the latest Bungie restructuring,according to Jeff Grubb, Smith and Noseworthy had no path forward in Bungie asPaybackhad been shelved. While we don’t have any hard info on the nature ofPaybackat this time, word is that it was supposed to be a standalone-ishDestinygame, although decidedly not a full-on sequel toDestiny 2.
Circling back to the big question I can’t help but pose: it’s virtually impossible that Bungiehasn’tlost some crucial talent in its latest lever-pulling round of layoffs. We have no way of knowing how this might affect its ongoing projects, and what the future holds for bothDestinyandMarathon. The only thing we do know is that there’s a whole lot of people who are now out of jobs, and it’s an absolute certainty that many of them were crucial forDestiny 2in its current state.
